Municipal Development Plan discussed at open house

Times Reporter 

 

The Town of Strathmore held an open house on Jan. 14 to introduce residents to some of the ideas and changes being proposed in the new Municipal Development Plan (MDP). Some of the topics discussed were indentifying future school sites, uses for land south of the highway, increased density, downtown revitalization and secondary suites.  

“The majority of people seemed to be quite pleased with the way the direction was going. There were some people who oddly enough didn’t think developers should be paying the cost of development, which we thought was a little bit odd and maybe people just don’t understand,” said Pat Maloney, senior planner with the town. 

“We didn’t get a lot of opposition to anything that we were proposing.” 

Some people didn’t think downtown revitalization should be as high a priority as being proposed but all that attended seemed to agree that it was a good thing. 

The next step, now that the open house is over, is to take both the public  and internal staff comments and prepare the draft of the MDP for first reading. Maloney said she is hoping that will happen at the second meeting in February. A public hearing will then be set for a later date, either the second meeting in March or the first in April.

“At the public hearing of course everybody will have the opportunity to speak for or against,” said Maloney.

“We’re hoping that the option is either that the document is approved on that date or council will send it for possibly some edits or revisions.”

The next major project for the town is the revised Land Use Bylaw, which can’t be worked on until the MDP is in place. 

“After the Municipal Development Plan the first thing will be to finish the Land Use Bylaw and then council has directed staff to prepare concept plans for all of the annexed lands,” said Maloney.

The concept plans won’t be a full Area Structure Plan, but they will give an indication on future land uses. Once that is outlined, then the engineering department can update the Master Servicing Strategy and Transportation Plan based on the proposed density and uses.

Residents are welcome to stop by the town office to pick up a copy of the questionnaire. You can also go online and see the display boards and the PowerPoint presentation. 

Maloney said the open house was fairly low key, with only about 35 people in attendance, but because of the passport option brought in those who attended were more engaged.